No favors and no illusions: The need of the hour is political and economic independence

Thus, even the explicit warnings of the lookouts, solid intelligence reports, and even the operational plan "Jericho Wall," which was revealed in full to the senior command, failed to crack the wall of complacency. In the face of thousands of Hamas terrorists charging forward, almost no Israeli force stood in their way, and the residents of the Gaza envelope were abandoned, victims of a brutal massacre unlike any we had known since the Holocaust.

Incidentally, "Jericho Wall" was not a general intelligence assessment or a vague report. It was Hamas's complete operations manual - a document of about 40 pages that reached the Intelligence Directorate and Southern Command more than a year before October 7. It detailed, step by step and with alarming precision, what actually happened: breaching the fence at dozens of points, a drone attack on observation and technological systems, the takeover of IDF bases, and the invasion of communities.

The most immediate and urgent lesson we must draw since the outbreak of the campaign concerns our strategic independence, and more precisely, the urgent need to reduce our diplomatic dependence on foreign countries and to build manufacturing independence in armaments.

The war exposed the fragility of Israel's supply chain. The covert and overt embargo, delays in shipments of critical components, and diplomatic boycotts - all of these seeped down to the most esoteric levels: workers' committees in foreign ports that refused to unload goods destined for Israel, and even workers at the end of the screw-packaging line who sabotaged spare parts.

The shortage of raw materials also weighed heavily, and Israel was forced to go to great lengths and pay a great deal of money to obtain them. A state intent on survival cannot allow itself to depend on the whims of a dockworker in Europe or on one political decision or another in Washington.

At the same time, alongside the duty to strengthen ourselves and achieve armament independence, we must not write the army a blank check. The budgetary demands now coming from the defense establishment reach astronomical sums that could topple the economy. Ultimately, national resilience is measured also by the economy and by society. One of the central lessons from the disintegration of the Soviet Union is that it is not enough to have a strong army and enormous weapons warehouses; if there is no strong and stable economy behind them, the entire system will collapse from within. The IDF must carry out a deep and searching self-examination, cut unnecessary fat, create an efficient organizational structure, and prove managerial productivity suited to the challenges of tomorrow.

On the strategic level, we need sobriety and deep realism, of the kind expressed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in order to look reality straight in the eye and understand the environment in which we live. Despite tremendous operational successes, the existential danger posed by Iran and its proxies remains real, and we must prepare for even more severe scenarios: hostile regional coalitions led by Turkey, dramatic regime reversals in Egypt or Jordan (which in any event rests on shaky foundations), and even threats from more distant nuclear powers such as Pakistan.

We saw how the Hamas-Hezbollah-Iran axis was built before our eyes, in which the ideological aspiration to destroy Israel completely overcame the deep religious and historical disputes between Shiites and Sunnis. This dynamic of forces uniting against us can certainly happen again.

History teaches us that this is the natural state of affairs in the Middle East. In the 1960s, Nasser tried to unite the Arab world against Israel under the banner of pan-Arabism, and in the 1970s, Assad the father tried to mobilize the Arab and Muslim world for the struggle against Zionism. David Ben-Gurion's diplomatic and military conception was then based on forging internal strength alongside alliances with the peripheral countries of the Arab world - Turkey, Iran, and Ethiopia of that time - and connections with minorities such as the Maronites in Lebanon and the Kurds in Iraq. Incidentally, this insight remains valid today as well. The Arab world is not a monolith, and it is possible and necessary to maneuver within it, but the starting point must rest on our own strength.

Here enters the professional role of the IDF, regardless of the identity of those sitting in Jerusalem. The intelligence, planning, and operations branches must wean themselves from the habit of preparing the army for the previous war and begin preparing for possible future scenarios with high probability. This management tool - decision-making and strategy-building according to scenarios - is well known in the business world. The company that brought it to the forefront in the 1970s was the international energy company Shell, which managed to survive the global oil crises thanks to early preparation for "improbable" scenarios. It is time for the defense establishment to adopt this hard-nosed business methodology.

At the same time, we must prepare politically for diplomatic upheavals in the West. As became clear, diplomatic and military backing from the United States can change quickly, especially in times of crisis. The political environment in Washington - among both Republicans and Democrats - is becoming less sympathetic toward us, while isolationist forces on the right and left grow stronger and are inflamed by antisemitic elements.

In Europe, the dangerous and synergistic combination of radical Islam and radical progressive forces is creating a diplomatic stranglehold that we cannot ignore. We saw this recently even with major friends of Israel, such as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who chose to put clear distance between herself and us - decisive evidence of the strength of the economic and political pressure from the institutions of the European Union, on which she depends.

These are not theoretical concerns; history proves that all this has happened before. Many tend to forget that the strategic alliance with the United States as we know it was forged only after the decisive victory in the Six-Day War - conclusive proof that in the geopolitical world, great powers speak only with the strong. In the state's early years, Washington scrupulously refrained from arms shipments and even led, together with Britain, a strict arms embargo on the Middle East. The first change began only in 1963, when John F. Kennedy agreed to provide us with defensive weapons only, in the form of Hawk missiles.

Yet even when there were remarkably friendly administrations in Washington, diplomatic crises immediately produced a military embargo. This happened under President Ronald Reagan, when the Pentagon suspended the supply of F-16 aircraft following Menachem Begin's bombing of the reactor in Iraq; and it had happened earlier, during the forceful "reassessment" led by Henry Kissinger after Israel refused to sign the interim agreement with Egypt.

This dynamic has not changed: President Joe Biden, unquestionably a clear friend of Israel, also chose to delay shipments of heavy bombs in an attempt to impose his will on the decision-makers in Jerusalem.

In other words, the United States has always used weapons supply as a political lever against Israel, even under the friendliest administrations. Vice President Vance's remarks in this context could not be clearer.

And it is not only the United States. Long before that, it was the Soviet Union that supplied us with critical weapons in the War of Independence through Czechoslovakia, until the Korean War finally made clear to the Soviets that Israel would not be part of the communist camp - and the supply pipeline was shut off at once.

The French lesson is no less searing: France was our greatest friend in the 1950s, armed the Air Force with front-line aircraft, and the public in Israel sang its praises - until reality turned against us with the cynical decision of President Charles de Gaulle, who imposed a complete embargo on Israel on the eve of the war in 1967.

In short, we have been there before. These lessons are precisely the engine that drove us in the past to build splendid defense industries: Israel Aerospace Industries, Rafael, IMI (now Elbit), and others. This is the source that gave birth to the Merkava tank, which became one of the best and most protected tanks in the world, and this is the basis for the development of our exceptional multi-layered air defense system, now being sold to Germany - a kind of poetic and historical closing of the circle for the Jewish people.

Nevertheless, as a small country surrounded by enemies, we have always needed allies. The strategic alliance with the United States was and remains one of the pillars of Israeli strength, but now new content must be poured into it in a way that suits the changing political climate in Washington. In this arena too, we must carry out careful scenario planning: whether we see an isolationist Republican administration in the spirit of J. D. Vance in the White House, or a progressive Democratic candidate from the left wing, the forecasts for the future are not encouraging.

Against this background, the prime minister did well when he announced a new plan to replace U.S. foreign aid with a strategic technological partnership. In the current economic and political reality in Washington, more and more voices are calling for a drastic cut in American foreign aid, of which Israel is the main beneficiary.

As part of the new diplomatic sobriety, we must create closer and more creative connections with the powers of tomorrow in Asia, especially with rising India. A strategic alliance with New Delhi - based on a combination of Israeli technological innovation and the Indians' enormous industrial production capacity, alongside a shared struggle against Islamic extremism - could serve as a critical counterweight and a practical substitute for large parts of our dependence on the United States.

At the same time, we must leverage the defense high-tech that many countries need and turn it into a diplomatic tool as well.

The solution to the need for manufacturing independence is not to turn Israel into an isolated Sparta or a closed autarkic economy - something that is impossible in the global age. Nor will we become North Korea, which itself depends on China.

The solution is a comprehensive, orderly, cross-ministerial national program that will define the core areas in which Israel must achieve full manufacturing independence: from raw materials, through a production line for heavy ammunition, to cutting-edge technologies.

Incidentally, all of this will help strengthen Israel's defense industry, part of which is located in the periphery. This does not refer only to the large companies, but also to hundreds of small and medium-sized companies that are subcontractors of the larger ones.

This is a planning, resource, and management challenge of the first order. And who knows - perhaps out of this rupture, and out of the understanding that we have no one to rely on but ourselves, we will also learn how to revive national projects that were cut short in the past. Perhaps we will pour modern, technological, and independent content into the successor of the Lavi aircraft, which was a model of Israeli engineering genius and was intended to ensure Israel complete operational and armament independence, but was canceled because of American pressure.

This is not a fantasy - it is an existential necessity.